One of my favorite pieces of my lifestyle, and of early childhood home education in general, is time spent outdoors with Child! I've written a few posts over at The Renaissance Biologist about it, but wanted to dive in this week into some more research and resources about how and why to spend more time outdoors and less time on screens.
Update 1/4/25: Around the 2024 presidential election, I learned of the political ties between the 1KHO movement and support of Trump. I, and others, think that the linking of this man with any aspect of Christianity is harmful to the faith and not in line with 1 Thessalonians 5:22. Therefore, please take the below with a grain of salt, focus on the research, and be able to separate the core ideas behind 1KHO from the benefits of outdoor time.
Outdoor Time
The operating definition of outdoor time for this post, in line with almost all resources and research I've looked at, is time spent not indoors. Opening all the windows in the house doesn't count because there's a roof along with walls. However, going out under an umbrella or gazebo does count, because there are more windows than walls, and the minimal roof serves primarily to protect you from the elements.
The Research
- Relationship between risky outdoor play and children's health (Brussoni et al. 2015)
- Despite the current cultural climate (at least in the US) of parents restricting children's activities perceived as dangerous, risky outdoor play has numerous clear benefits. Categories of benefits include pro-social behaviors, less aggression, and fewer injuries--possibly since children learn their body's true limits by playing in risky ways.
- Determinants of how much time children and youth spend outdoors (Larouche et al. 2023)
- Children + youth are defined as 0-17 years old
- More likely to spend time outdoors: preexisting habits + warmer weather, specific advice, printed community guides for parents
- Less likely to spend time outdoors: COVID-19 restrictions (at least in 2020-2021) + sun safety interventions (no direct sunlight 10am-4pm, no exposure to ozone before and after school, no insect exposure between dusk and dawn
- Free play's effects (indoor and outdoor) on preschoolers' executive function (Koepp et al. 2022)
- Even if preschoolers are more active indoors than outdoors, outdoor play is better than indoor play at helping them pay attention shortly after the play period
- Outdoor play that is more active is best at helping preschoolers inhibit automatic responses in order to think through a more reasoned response to a task or prompt
Some Resources
As you might have guessed from the fact that half of review articles on outdoor time for children have been done within the last 10 years, there are many resources available online for the parent interested in helping their child(ren) get outside more often and for longer periods of time. What are the top 4 or so, according to internet searchers?
- 1000 Hours Outside (website + podcast). This site is maintained by a homeschool mom who invested years of time in bringing together published research, interviews with experts in related topics, and her own experience. I prefer this site because of its variety of downloadable and printable resources such as books with activity ideas and outdoor time trackers.
- National Wildlife Federation (website). Not really a surprise!
- Children and Nature Network (website). This seems to have been created more recently, since it has addressed pandemic implications in some detail.
- National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) - website sub-area addresses outdoor education specifically.
How We've Maximized It
I’ve always been somewhat of an outdoor person, thanks to my upbringing; Husband had more negative associations with being outside, so for him (especially in spring and summer) it is a labor of love. Therefore, I’ve been the one to simply include Child in my habit of going outside every day possible, using aids including a baby carrier, stroller, or local playground.
I work full-time, but have the privilege of needing to go to the office only 3 partial or full days per week during times when my classes are in session. On those days, I ensure that Child’s caregivers are bought in to the outdoor-time goal and dress accordingly.
On days I’m working from home, I will structure my work times to allow 1-2 (average) hours outside throughout the day, taking work with me whether that’s pre-reading, phone calls to make, or emails to answer in off moments with my smart phone.
Screen Time
Screen time, in this post’s operational definition, is any time a person spends looking at or otherwise interacting with an electronic device that has a screen. Common examples include smart phones, iPads, and TV.
The Research
Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s been a lot of recent work on screen time (I deliberately excluded work on “digital dementia” because it is more of a niche area). There are just under 800 review articles from the last 10 years on Google Scholar. Three interesting finds . . .
- Excessive time on screens and strategies to manage it (Muppalla et al. 2023)
- Effects of any integer number of hours per day: reduced executive function (due to multitasking with media), reduced interpersonal interaction quality, possibly reduced language development
- Authors think that multitasking behaviors may be more impactful than the sheer quantity of screen time, with effects years down the road (2 years old --> 4th grade)
- Videos that model higher language use and are co-viewed with parents or teachers can facilitate language development if introduced later in childhood
- How to manage/reduce screen time for children? (1) Parental rules, (2) parental controls (e.g., apps), (3) removal of screens from bedrooms, (4) modeling of screen-limited activities
- Childhood language development as related to screen time (Madigan et al. 2020)
- To optimize language development, minimize the quantity and maximize the quality of young children's screen time. Better-quality entails co-viewing with a caregiver and specific curation of content viewed.
- Screen time and behavior problems in children 0-12 years (Eirich et al. 2022)
- Weak (i.e., multifactorial), statistically significant (i.e., not random) associations are present between quantity of screen time and the presence or development of behavior problems in children. These problems include externalizing (e.g., aggression) and internalizing (e.g., anxiety).
Some Resources
Often, screen time and outdoor time tend to be mutually exclusive—or at least they should be! Since more outdoor time is better for children, and less screen time is also better, what are some online resources for parents to address the screen time factor?
- 1000 Hours Outside . . . again
- Internet Matters - how to automatically restrict screen time (e.g., with an app or parent-set control)
- Zero to Three - how to improve quality of screen time that children do spend using screens
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (division of the NIH)
How We've Minimized It
Since both of our jobs as a 2-income household require significant amounts of screen time for each of us, we structure the layout of our rooms and our days so that Child doesn’t get secondhand exposure if possible. Here are four 4️⃣ things we do (besides one parent retreating to the home office for long stretches):
- Move the TV to the workout room and keep that door closed. We did this two Advents ago to make room for the tree and never brought the TV back up. Currently, it’s only used for watching Great Courses lectures when Husband walks on the treadmill.
- Use phone as opposed to laptop for working around Child when possible. Both of us do this when work is needed during Child’s awake time.
- If using laptop around awake Child, keep it out of his view. This applies only to me since Husband is squirreled away in the office.
- Family screen time: a few minutes over dinner of a good show (e.g., Star Trek)
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